The Tez rebranding is likely to convince Walmart not to accept NFC payments. Instead, Walmart will demand that Alphabet and Apple adopt QR Code.

Google Pay is likely to roll out QR Code in the United States. That will force Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) to add QR code to Apple Pay. A natural consequence of Google Pay QR Code is PayPal adopting QR Code. The addition of QR Code to Venmo is inevitable too.

The tech giants will have to go along because Walmart is on track to generate $500.34 billion (half a trillion dollars) in revenues in 2018, Statista forecast. Access to that revenue is probably what convinced Alphabet to add QR Code to Google Pay.

Money Tap will use a QR (quick read) code to communicate with cash registers and automatic teller machines (ATMs), PYMNTs.com reported. Theoretically, Money Tap would allow individuals to make brick and mortar purchases with Ripple; move Ripple funds into bank accounts, convert Ripple funds into cash and withdraw it from ATMs or cash registers, and make cash deposits through ATMs that can be converted into Ripple.

This should greatly increase Venmo use by eliminating two of the greatest drawbacks to the app. Those drawbacks were the inability to use it at most brick and mortar businesses, and the difficulty converting Venmo funds into paper cash.

Payments will be the big tech battle of 2018. Expect competition in this sector to heat up as PayPal starts raking in more cash.

Walmart Pay users will not get cash back by paying with Chase Freedom, but they can get 5% Cashback by using Chase Pay at Walmart. Walmart (NYSE: WMT), America’s retailer accepts Chase Pay because it is a quick-read (QR) code based application like Walmart Pay. Although Chase Pay users can get 10% cash back at Walmart; if they pay with the Chase Sapphire or Freedom Unlimited Cards, before December 24, 2017, Nerdwallet reported.

Beyond enabling Chinese business the Oxford deal gives Ant; and Tencent, a beachhead to enter the Canadian market. Once ensconced at the centers the two companies will start marketing their payment options to Canadians.

Mr. Market certainly noticed that growth, Walmart’s stock price shot up from $90.26 on November 8 to $96.40 on November 22, 2017. If Walmart has a good Black Friday that price will exceed $100 a share by December 1.

Now for the astounding news, Walmart’s revenues will clear a half a trillion dollars sometime next year if the current growth rate continues. Walmart reported $495.10 billion in revenues for October 31, 2017, up from $490.01 billion in July 2017.

If that performance is repeated in the next quarter; Walmart will report around $500 billion or half a trillion dollars in revenue early in 2018. History seems to support this conclusion; Walmart’s revenue has been growing for the past seven quarters. It has posted growth for every quarter since January 2016.

Only 16% of Americans said they had used a mobile wallet in 2015, a JPMorgan Chase survey indicates. The same survey found that only 56% of large businesses and 25% of small businesses were accepting payments from such mobile wallets.

Around 6% of 58,000 customers surveyed by Forester Research said they used Walmart Pay, Bloomberg Technology reported. About 7% of the same group said they had used Apple Pay in the past three months. That means the adoption rate of the two apps is about the same.

The number of active Walmart Pay users will surpass the number of Apple Pay users sometime next year, Richard Crone; the CEO of Crone Consulting told Bloomberg Technology on 7 November. Walmart Senior Vice President for Services and Digital Acceleration Daniel Eckert thinks his company’s victory in the payment wars will come sooner than that.

Like Apple Pay, Android Pay still has not cracked the hardest barrier of all big U.S. retailers.

Almost no major U.S. retail brands appear in the Where to Use Android Pay page at the app’s website. Such behemoths as Walmart, Amazon, Kroger, Home Depot, Lowes, CVS, Burger King, Safeway, and Target are conspicuously absent from the list. The same sorry situation is repeated at Apple Pay, where almost all the big names in U.S. retail are conspicuously absent.